16 hours ago
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Years before there was a call for transparency with the Epstein files, I spent months reading the documents. Not the headlines – the documents: the emails, the financial records, the human suffering, and the internal communications that mapped how one man’s wealth and power built an ecosystem of exploitation that operated for decades. As a sex trafficking expert for more than 15 years, I’ve witnessed many men who abused their power and the system, but rarely have I seen wealth weaponized so effectively and for so long.
I read the files because I served as the expert witness for the US Virgin Islands in its litigation against JPMorgan Chase, which alleged that the bank maintained a financial relationship with Epstein despite evidence of his sex trafficking. The case ended in a 2023 settlement; the bank did not admit wrongdoing. I reviewed the messages from men with power and wealth in Epstein’s orbit. I saw what they said, what they didn’t say, and what they saw and didn’t see.
So when Bill Gates spoke before his foundation staff last month and said it had been “a huge mistake to spend time with Epstein” – when he said he “did nothing illicit” and “saw nothing illicit”, and when he publicly apologized for associating with him – I felt something familiar. Not surprise. Exhaustion.
In my work representing trafficking survivors, I’ve learned that moments like these follow a depressingly predictable script. There are apologies. There are carefully lawyered statements about what someone did or didn’t see. And then, if the news cycle cooperates, most people move on. The survivors don’t get to.
Gates’ apology – and others like it - are necessary. I want to be clear about that. Acknowledging it was a mistake to spend time with Epstein matters. But it is not sufficient. Not even close.
It was power and wealth that allowed Epstein’s exploitation to continue for as long as it did. Power made it possible for Epstein to recruit victims with promises of opportunity and connections. Wealth made it possible for him to silence the women who came forward while it was still happening, through lawyers, through settlements with nondisclosure agreements, through the sheer intimidating force of his resources. The constellation of people around Epstein gave him a legitimacy that made it harder for anyone inside the ecosystem to speak up, even if they were inclined to.
I know many people are calling for criminal accountability for those who participated in the crimes within Epstein’s orbit. I share that call. For some individuals, accountability should absolutely mean arrest and prosecution. But not everyone in Epstein’s ecosystem committed crimes.
Which leaves a question nobody seems to be asking: is an apology enough?
Consider what survivors are facing at this very moment. The Epstein Files Transparency Act, passed in late 2025, led to the release of more than 3m pages of documents. The stated goal was transparency and accountability, which survivors deserve. But the justice department’s botched redactions have exposed victim after victim, leaving their names, their stories and the worst moments of their lives searchable on a government website. Attorneys representing more than 200 survivors called it “the single most egregious violation of victim privacy in one day in United States history”.
These women now face a digital reality in which their exploitation may define them for the rest of their lives. Every job application, every new relationship, every Google search of their name carries the possibility of exposure. Erasing digital traces is technically complex and financially prohibitive for most people.
People like Bill Gates have the resources to help.
Gates has $100bn and one of the most sophisticated technology networks on Earth. He could fund digital privacy restoration for survivors whose identities were exposed. He could help pay for the specialized legal work required to scrub records from the internet.
He could do all of this tomorrow.
And it shouldn’t be Gates alone. Every person of means who spent time in Epstein’s world has a moral debt. Not a legal one, but a human one. The kind that an apology doesn’t discharge.
I’ve represented hundreds of trafficking survivors. One thing I’ve learned is that the harm doesn’t end when the exploitation stops. It echoes through the legal system, the digital landscape and every institution that failed to intervene. The women in the Epstein files aren’t abstractions. They are people whose full lives extend far beyond the worst thing that happened to them. They are mothers, professionals, friends, neighbors. They deserve to be seen as more than case numbers in a government database.
We have started hearing apologies. We are hearing the careful denials. What we haven’t had is anyone with the resources to help actually offering to help.
An apology costs nothing. That’s precisely the problem.
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Bridgette Carr is a clinical professor at the University of Michigan Law School and the founding director of the country’s first Human Trafficking Clinic
